Message "Async callback was not invoked within the 5000 ms timeout specified by jest.setTimeout"

The timeout you specify here needs to be shorter than the default timeout.

The default timeout is 5000 and the framework by default is jasmine in case of jest. You can specify the timeout inside the test by adding

jest.setTimeout(30000);

But this would be specific to the test. Or you can set up the configuration file for the framework.

Configuring Jest

// jest.config.js
module.exports = {
  // setupTestFrameworkScriptFile has been deprecated in
  // favor of setupFilesAfterEnv in jest 24
  setupFilesAfterEnv: ['./jest.setup.js']
}

// jest.setup.js
jest.setTimeout(30000)

See also these threads:

setTimeout per test #5055

Make jasmine.DEFAULT_TIMEOUT_INTERVAL configurable #652

P.S.: The misspelling setupFilesAfterEnv (i.e. setupFileAfterEnv) will also throw the same error.

It should call the async/await when it is async from test.

describe("Profile Tab Exists and Clickable: /settings/user", () => {
    test(`Assert that you can click the profile tab`, async (done) => {
        await page.waitForSelector(PROFILE.TAB);
        await page.click(PROFILE.TAB);
        done();
    }, 30000);
});

The answer to this question has changed as Jest has evolved. Current answer (March 2019):

1. You can override the timeout of any individual test by adding a third parameter to the it. I.e., it('runs slow', () => {...}, 9999)

2. You can change the default using jest.setTimeout. To do this:

   // Configuration
   "setupFilesAfterEnv": [  // NOT setupFiles
       "./src/jest/defaultTimeout.js"
   ],
   

   and

   // File: src/jest/defaultTimeout.js
   /* Global jest */
   jest.setTimeout(1000)
   

3. Like others have noted, and not directly related to this, done is not necessary with the async/await approach.

This is a relatively new update, but it is much more straight forward. If you are using Jest 24.9.0 or higher you can just add testTimeout to your config:

// in jest.config.js
module.exports = {
  testTimeout: 30000
}

For Jest 24.9+, we just need to add --testTimeout on the command line:

--testTimeout= 10000 // Timeout of 10 seconds

The default timeout value is 5000 (5000 ms - 5 seconds). This will be applicable for all test cases.

Or if you want to give timeout to particular function only then you can use this syntax while declaring the test case.

test(name, fn, timeout)

Example

test('example', async () => {

}, 10000); // Timeout of 10 seconds (default is 5000 ms)

I would like to add (this is a bit long for a comment) that even with a timeout of 3000 my tests would still sometimes (randomly) fail with

Timeout - Async callback was not invoked within the 5000ms timeout specified by jest.setTimeout.

Thanks to Tarun's great answer, I think the shortest way to fix a lot of tests is:

describe('Puppeteer tests', () => {
  beforeEach(() => {
    jest.setTimeout(10000);
  });

  test('Best Jest test fest', async () => {
    // Blah
  });
});

For Jest 24.9+, you can also set the timeout from the command line by adding --testTimeout.

Here's an excerpt from its documentation:

--testTimeout=<number>
Default timeout of a test in milliseconds. Default value: 5000.

Make sure to invoke done(); on callbacks or it simply won't pass the test.

beforeAll((done /* Call it or remove it */ ) => {
  done(); // Calling it
});

It applies to all other functions that have a done() callback.

Yet another solution: set the timeout in the Jest configuration file, e.g.:

{ // ... other stuff here
    "testTimeout": 90000
}

You can also get timeout errors based on silly typos. For example, this seemingly innocuous mistake:

describe('Something', () => {
  it('Should do something', () => {
    expect(1).toEqual(1)
  })

  it('Should do nothing', something_that_does_not_exist => {
    expect(1).toEqual(1)
  })
})

Produces the following error:

FAIL src/TestNothing.spec.js (5.427s)
  ● Something › Should do nothing

    Timeout - Async callback was not invoked within the 5000ms timeout specified by jest.setTimeout.
      
      at node_modules/jest-jasmine2/build/queue_runner.js:68:21
      at Timeout.callback [as _onTimeout] (node_modules/jsdom/lib/jsdom/browser/Window.js:678:19)

While the code sample posted doesn't suffer from this, it might be a cause of failures elsewhere. Also note that I'm not setting a timeout for anything anywhere - either here or in the configuration. The 5000 ms is just the default setting.

Mar 14, 2022, Jest 27.5 documentation indicates a new process:

https://jestjs.io/docs/api#beforeallfn-timeout

Pass a second parameter to test with the number of msec before timeout. Works!

test('adds 1 + 2 to equal 3', () => {
    expect(3).toBe(3);
},30000);

I recently ran into this issue for a different reason: I was running some tests synchronously using jest -i, and it would just timeout. For whatever reasoning, running the same tests using jest --runInBand (even though -i is meant to be an alias) doesn't time out.

test accepts a timeout argument. See https://jestjs.io/docs/api#testname-fn-timeout. Here is a sample:

async function wait(millis) {
  console.log(`sleeping for ${millis} milliseconds`);
  await new Promise(r => setTimeout(r, millis));
  console.log("woke up");
}
test('function', async () => {
  await wait(5000);
}, 70000);

// In jest.setup.js
jest.setTimeout(30000)

If on Jest <= 23:

// In jest.config.js
module.exports = {
  setupTestFrameworkScriptFile: './jest.setup.js'
}

If on Jest > 23:

// In jest.config.js
module.exports = {
  setupFilesAfterEnv: ['./jest.setup.js']
}

The timeout problem occurs when either the network is slow or many network calls are made using await. These scenarios exceed the default timeout, i.e., 5000 ms. To avoid the timeout error, simply increase the timeout of globals that support a timeout. A list of globals and their signature can be found here.

For Jest 24.9

Turns out if your expect assertions are wrong, it can sometimes spit out the exceeded timeout error message.

I was able to figure this out by putting console.log() statements in my promise callback and saw the console.log() statements were getting ran in the jest output. Once I fixed my expect assertions, the timeout error went away and tests worked.

I spent way too long to figure this out and hope this helps whoever needs to read this.

For the jest versions greater than 27, you can add useRealTimers on the top of your spec file.

Here is the snippet

import { shortProcess, longProcess } from '../../src/index';

jest.useRealTimers();

describe(`something`, function () {
    it('should finish fine', async function () {
        await shortProcess();
        expect(1).toBe(1);
    });

    it('should fail with a timeout', async function () {
        await longProcess();
        expect(1).toBe(1);
    });

    it('should finish fine again', async function () {
        jest.setTimeout(10 * 1000);
        await longProcess();
        expect(1).toBe(1);
    }, 10000);
});

Find the github issue here on jest repository.

In case someone doesn't fix the problem use methods above. I fixed mine by surrounding the async func by an arrow function. As in:

describe("Profile Tab Exists and Clickable: /settings/user", () => {
    test(`Assert that you can click the profile tab`, (() => {
      async () => {
        await page.waitForSelector(PROFILE.TAB)
        await page.click(PROFILE.TAB)
      }
    })(), 30000);
});

In my case, this error started appearing randomly and wouldn't go away even after setting a timeout of 30000. Simply ending the process in the terminal and rerunning the tests resolved the issue for me. I have also removed the timeout and tests are still passing again.

This probably won't be terribly helpful to most people visiting this page, but when I was getting this error it had nothing to do with Jest. One of my method calls was getting an empty object and a null exception while running locally. Once I added a null check, the failing tests and console log in question disappeared.

if(response !== null){
    this.searchSubj.next(resp);
 }
 else {
    return;
 }

modify your jest.config.X like this , X could be your language ts or js

module.exports = {
  preset: 'ts-jest',
  testEnvironment: 'node',
  //add below line to timeout//
  testTimeout: 30000
};

In case you are using package.json to set the jest configurations:

  "jest": {
    "testTimeout": 30000,
  }

Add this testTimeout configuration to the package file.

I made a trivial test which should pass:

test('first-ever', _ => {
    expect(1).toBe(1);
});

• Notice I use _=>... (a function with one argument, even if I don't use that argument)...
• instead of ()=>... (a function with no arguments)

This comment was the answer

The presence of a parameter (named done in this case) in the callback causes Jest to wait until this parameter is called. Its presence is significant even if it is not used. –

Once I removed the single argument, made it like this, my tests passed!

test('first-ever', () => {
    expect(1).toBe(1);
});

As explained on the Jest website:

There is an alternate form of test that fixes this. Instead of putting the test in a function with an empty argument, use a single argument called done. Jest will wait until the done callback is called before finishing the test.

For those who are looking for an explanation about jest --runInBand, you can go to the documentation.

Running Puppeteer in CI environments

GitHub - smooth-code/jest-puppeteer: Run your tests using Jest & Puppeteer

Dropping my 2 cents here, I had the same issue on dosen of jest unit test (not all of them) and I notice that all started after I added to jestSetup this polyfill for MutuationObservers:

if (!global.MutationObserver) {
    global.MutationObserver = function MutationObserverFun(callback) {
        this.observe = function(){};
        this.disconnect = function(){};
        this.trigger = (mockedMutationsList) => {
            callback(mockedMutationsList, this);
        };
    };
}

Once I removed it test start working again correctly. Hope helps someone .

My issue was that I was using Nodejs 12 with Sequelize (pg: 7.14 - Postgres client). Then I upgraded nodejs version to 16, so "Timeout" errors showed up:

Timeout - Async callback was not invoked within the 5000 ms timeout specified by jest.setTimeout

After an hour of debugging, I found out that pg vesion 7 isn't compatible with node >= 14. Because of that, pg.connection hangs.

So my solution was: I upgrade pg version to 8

If somebody is getting this error in render,fireEventAPI or any other API from @testing-library/react-native for testing try adding the following lines

afterEach(() => {... jest.useRealTimers(); });

inside your describe also add

jest.useFakeTimers()

in beforeEach Not sure about the reason but this worked for me

To add on to the answers already provided here, if your tests are timing out but are flaky (or only timeout randomly in pipeline), then it's likely due to lack of memory or cpu. Try running the tests with option --runInBand and see if it fixes the issue.

npx jest --runInBand

If it does fix the issue then you can gradually increase number of parallel workers with option --maxWorkers and see when the tests starting to timeout, or when the performance start to degrade when workers are increased. Also do monitor the system resources while running the tests and see if tests are leaking memory or have high cpu utilisation.

 npx jest --maxWorkers=1

Reason that after a critical point adding more workers in parallel starts to slow down tests is parallelisation has a overhead cost and more workers not necessarily mean faster test execution time.